Christmas in Warp Speed

Christmas seems to come faster and faster every year. Flying along at warp speed it is suddenly upon us. We spend so much time preparing for it. Baking, buying and wrapping gifts, decorating the inside and outside of the house, buying a tree, decorating the tree, hosting parties, attending parties, holiday plays and choir concerts, etc.. Only to have it all be over in what seems like an hour. It is like coming down from a big sugar rush. It can be very depressing.

I remember as a child, as soon as Thanksgiving was over , we brought up all of our decorations and holiday music up from the cellar. We started decorating to Christmas music. As the month passed by, seemingly slow back then, we would wait and wait for Santa Claus to come. We'd watch the Christmas Specials on TV, have little cupcake and Secret Santa parties at school, fight over who got to open the chocolate advent calender THIS time, etc. Then finally that glorious night came. I would try and sleep. Normally I would get about three hours sleep max because I was so excited. We would get up at around 6am and tear through our stockings like mad men. Then we would sit and wait not so patiently for our parents to wake up. When that time finally came my father would play Santa and pass us each a present. When we each had one we would tear into them like crazy and then set them aside in our own pile. After about 15 minutes and a big pile of wrapping paper, it was over. It was all over. We would go and put our pile of goodies in our rooms and help clean up the wrapping paper. My dad would start making breakfast, and then the tree would get taken down. A sudden feeling of emptiness would come over me. That down sugar rush feeling I was talking about earlier. Christmas was over. We would watch the specials on TV all day, but knew that as soon as we closed our eyes and fell asleep that night, that Christmas was over for another year.

How sad it is that so much effort is put into the holiday, only to have it be over so quickly. Maybe it comes from so much emphasis being on the gift giving aspect? We all know that Christmas is far too commercialized, yet most of us grew up with it being that way and it is almost part of our tradition. Spoiling kids at Christmas, decorating competitions, shopping on black Friday and being stomped on by other parents trying to grab the "IT" toy of the season.

Now it seems that Christmas comes a lot faster than it used to. People get so rushed to get prepared for the season. Stress is set to high this time of year. Whether it be about affording gifts, throwing the perfect Christmas party or all the baking that must be done, there is always way to much stress going on. By the time you finally have time to sit and breath on Christmas morning, it is all over.

This year I am going to try not to over stress myself too much. My son is only almost 3. He doesn't need a million toys. My mother and father always tell me not to spend a lot of money on them or even worry about giving them gifts at all, or my siblings really. We are all adults. Perhaps just small, intimate gifts, maybe homemade ones, would do? I wonder how hard it will be to really get back to what Christmas is all about. Spending time with family and celebrating. It seems this tradition is often forgotten about in the midst of the Holiday hustle and bustle. Every year millions of people say the same thing about concentrating strictly on family this year. It never seems to happen. Will we ever change? I know that at least I have always enjoyed gift giving, even if it causes so much stress. Perhaps this year Santa will bring us a change of heart and mind.